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MojoKid writes "News from gaming insider Pete Doss is that Microsoft is mulling significant changes to the restrictions it places on developers regarding the Xbox One's GPU. Reportedly, some 10% of total GPU horsepower is reserved for the Kinect — 8% for video and 2% for voice processing. Microsoft is apparently planning changes that would free up that 8% video entirely, leaving just 2% of the system's GPU dedicated to voice input. If Microsoft makes this change, it could have a significant uplift on system frame rates — and it's not clear that developers would necessarily need to patch the architecture to take advantage of the difference."

Fact remains that even moderate PCs today outperform both the PS4 and Xbox One at a similar price point.

Not in your or mine wildest dreams

The PS4 from Wikipedia "The CPU consists of two quad-core Jaguar modules totaling 8 x86-64 cores. The GPU consists of 18 compute units to produce a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 TFLOPS. The system's GDDR5 memory is capable of running at a maximum clock frequency of 2.75 GHz (5500 MT/s) and has a maximum memory bandwidth of 176 GB/s. The console contains 8 GB of GDDR5 memory" for US$399.99, €399.99, £349.99

Bear in mind that prices for AMD GPUs are a little inflated at the moment because of the crypto mining craze.

All the same, $150 sounds about right for the GPU in a mid-range gaming machine. Machines at that level are often built 'unbalanced' - a weaker CPU mated with a more expensive GPU, on the assumption that most games don't fully utilise the CPU. You only see serious investment on the CPU for higher end gaming machines or workstations.

Bear in mind that prices for AMD GPUs are a little inflated at the moment because of the crypto mining craze.

Price inflation is mostly affecting Tahiti (7950/7970/280X) and Hawaii (290/290X). The Pitcairn-based cards (7850/7870/270/270X) haven't moved much. The deals aren't as good as they were in the run-up to Christmas, but that's true of just about everything else, not just AMD video cards.

The 7870 always had a street price of a bit under $200; the 2GB 7850 was usually around $150, with the 1GB version somewhat less (but not in much demand). I paid $179.99 for my 7870 and thought it was a pretty good deal.